Latest National Radio Astronomy Observatory Stories

Associated Universities Inc. (AUI) and the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) have made a preliminary examination of the report released today from the National Science Foundation (NSF) Astronomy Portfolio Review Committee (PRC). Among the recommendations of that report are that the NSF’s Green Bank Telescope (GBT) and Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA) be fully divested from the NSF Astronomy Division’s portfolio of research facilities in the next five years, with no further...

redOrbit Staff & Wire Reports - Your Universe Online Researchers with the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) and the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) in New Mexico announced Friday that they had successfully achieved "first light" at low frequencies using the Jansky Very Large Array (JVLA) radio astronomy telescope. Using five of the JVLA's 27 230-ton, 25-meter diameter very high-frequency (VHF) dish antennas, NRAO astronomer Dr. Frazer Owen was able to map the radio...

Astronomers are building a virtual telescope as big as our planet that will capture the first ever picture outlining an enormous black hole within our galaxy. The Event Horizon Telescope will be powerful enough to see all the way to the center of the Milky Way, where the super massive black hole lives. Researchers believe by capturing an image of the black hole, it will allow astrophysicists to put Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity to the test. Scientists from related fields...

Astronomers using the partially completed ALMA observatory have found compelling evidence for how star-forming galaxies evolve into 'red and dead' elliptical galaxies, catching a large group of galaxies right in the middle of this change. For years, astronomers have been developing a picture of galaxy evolution in which mergers between spiral galaxies could explain why nearby large elliptical galaxies have so few young stars. The theoretical picture is chaotic and violent: The merging...

NEWTON, N.C., Oct. 3, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Thirteen 12-meter antennas manufactured by General Dynamics SATCOM Technologies have been successfully installed at the 16,500-foot-high Chajnantor plateau in Chile, home to the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) astronomical observatory. Located in the Andes mountains, the 115-ton, highly specialized antennas form part of an 11-mile-wide international astronomy project. When it is completed in 2013, scientists will use the...

[ Watch the Video ] Astronomers have opened up its doors to a new ground-base telescope that will help give scientists a peak at the places that have never been explored. The Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) has released an image of a merging pair of galaxies as part of its grand opening. ALMA is the largest and most expensive radio observatory on Earth and was funded by several different space agencies. Radio observatories collect tiny waves given off by the...

  The ultimate in high altitude, high-tech catering has arrived in Chile to serve chilled "provisions" to the telescopes at the largest astronomical complex in the world, the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA). Until now, servicing the state-of-the-art superconducting receivers inside an ALMA telescope has required hauling the entire 115-ton telescope from its observing site at 16,500 feet down to a support facility at 9,500 feet. The dangerous 40-mile roundtrip, atop...

Early results from dramatically upgraded telescope show breadth of scientific impactA new and uniquely powerful tool for cutting-edge science is emerging on the crisp, high desert of western New Mexico. Outwardly, it looks much the same as the famed Very Large Array (VLA), a radio telescope that has spent more than three decades on the frontiers of astronomical research. The 27 white, 230-ton dish antennas still peer skyward, the 72 miles of railroad track still wait to transport the antennas...

Continent-wide telescope extends cosmic 'yardstick' three times farther into universeUsing the super-sharp radio "vision" of astronomy's most precise telescope, scientists have extended a directly-measured "yardstick" three times farther into the cosmos than ever before, an achievement with important implications for numerous areas of astrophysics, including determining the nature of Dark Energy, which constitutes 70 percent of the Universe. The continent-wide Very Long...

Black holes could produce the enormous energies of a burst, but not neutron starsA gamma-ray burst is an immensely powerful blast of high-energy light thought to be generated by a collapsing star in a distant galaxy, but what this collapse leaves behind has been a matter of debate.A new analysis of four extremely bright bursts observed by NASA's Fermi satellite suggests that the remnant from a long-duration gamma-ray burst is most likely a black hole "“ not a rapidly spinning, highly...